To think just don’t offer them beige food?

[Ashlll]

Or am I spectacularly uneducated here? My sister has a 3 year old who apparently will only eat beige food and mostly crisps. She says it’s a sensory thing and we have to respect it when around him, for example when I took him and dd out last week I had to give him quavers rather than the snacks I had got for dd… which then made dd want quavers too! Same with water, he won’t drink it and it has to be juice.

I am not massively strict but did say to dsis just don’t buy these things then he won’t know he can ask for them… she says he just won’t eat or drink. I think this is ridiculous (I’ve not said this to her). AIBU?!?

But they’re all better than coke! Just whizzed up fruit! That’s the point, if they won’t eat the best example, try and get them to eat the second best, not resort to the worst. All I’m saying is there’s got to be something better theyd eat than quavers from all the bland fry foods in the world and if we’d never given them quavers in the first place, they wouldn’t want them now. When my kids eat shit it’s my fault for giving it to them! At least I can admit it

One day in the future we will look back at ultra processed food in the way we look at cigarettes now

Yet you won't admit that you have absolutely no idea about ARFID or childhood disordered eating. It's not as easy as "just give them the second best option".

We are not talking about children who are fussy. We are talking about children who will refuse to eat (or drink) anything that is not one of their "safe" options. To the point of malnutrition, hospital admission and tube feeding.

These are children whose parents will have tried absolutely everything before resorting to the Quavers because a bag of quavers is a much better option than your child refusing yet another meal.

Yep, it's very easy to be right when you're not faced with a child who hasn't eaten anything except their "safe food" for weeks on end.

And now why on earth are we getting adverts for Iceland meals for “ picky eaters” on this thread?!
The “ picky eaters” spaghetti bol looks identical to bog standard home made spaghetti Bol which my now adult ARFID child still has never tried due to onions lurking in it

We don’t even know if this kid actually has arfid! A kid that age hasn’t even been on the planet long enough to have tried all the foods that are better than quavers, he’s clearly been introduced to them early on.

Yep, you clearly know best.

🙄 just stay in denial that this crap we are letting our kids eat isn’t harming them

I never said it wasn't - you're just assuming that's what I think.

But as you clearly have no idea about ARFID or childhood eating disorders, it's probably best that you don't assume parents are just shovelling Quavers down their children because they can't be arsed to feed them something else.

Maybe you should try and learn some empathy for others instead of criticising them.

The crux of the matter is that it’ really difficult for OP to stick to her own way of doing things around this.

My kids were ‘normal’ eaters - lucky me. We once had another mum and her daughter for a bit of a ‘party tea’:
Ham sandwiches
Cucumber sticks
Cubes of cheddar
Cherry tomatoes
Grapes
Etc
^ that sort of thing. There was not one thing on that table that this child would eat.
There was a chocolate cake on the side for pudding and she was whining and pointing at it. Her mum gave her a slice of chocolate cake while my kids were still eating their savoury stuff. My kids were looking at me, silently outraged that this girl was allowed to go straight to chocolate cake having not eating anything at all of the savoury stuff.

We obviously talked about it after she’d left.

Really, really hard when this is going on in your family because you don’t have the option to see less of them or just see them in ways that don’t involve food, eg a play at the park.

OP: plan that your sister and her kid are going to keep on doing what they’re doing - you can’t change that. Talk to your children about what’s going on and be honest with them. Explain about good nutrition and how fruit/ veggies/ variety are really good for their healthy bodies and why.

This must be a very small percentage of kids that actually have arfid though. Outside of mumsnet have never heard of it before. In 53 years of life with lots of family members friends with kids and grandkids etc not one case.

Plenty of fussy eaters who didn't actually starve themselves so not AFRID

I'm just imagining a thread where a parent of an anorexic teen gets told off for letting them eating quavers. ARFID is an EATING DISORDER it's not just being a bit picky or someone fed them the 'wrong' foods so now they won't accept anything else.

Then again someone probably would say the above on mumsnet 😂

But given that you don't know either way whether this is ARFID or "just" fussiness, it's best not to assume the worst.

I wasn't diagnosed with autism or any kind of neurodiversity until I was 36 years old. Thankfully my parents realised it was more than just "fussiness".

how lucky for your friends and family.

Because it’s not necessary about it being a processed food, but many of them are reliable and a child can recognise them as being ‘safe’.

Mcdonalds fries, quavers, chicken nuggets,
each time you buy them they look the same, taste the same, smell the same, usually packaging is the same and that’s why children (particularly with Afrid/ASD) eat them. It’s not because they are beige.

YABU though I understand it is easy to think that until it happens to you. I still wish that people who have children that don't refuse food would be a little less smug and self congratulatory though!

Do you have any personal or professional experience of arfid? Or just coming from place of inexperienced judgement?

you don’t think you’ve met anyone. Most of the time parents and families keep it hidden because of judgemental assholes.

Kids not eating at all or enough harms them more.

What is the point in pontificating about something that you clearly know nothing about?

Maybe try reading the real-life examples people have shared here of the struggles they've endured?

guessing the latter. a smoothy with dried liver in it 😫

The ignorance you are displaying here is ridiculous.

I don't think I have full-blown ARFID but I have been a "fussy eater" for 60 years. Fortunately, I did eat more of a range of foods than a lot of the children here but I ate very little as a child and there were lots of things, vegetables in particular, that I just couldn't eat and still can't. I often refused food, and if I had been forced to eat veg, I just wouldn't have eaten at all. I don't know why you seem to find that impossible to contemplate.

And I wasn't given Quavers either! My mother had me on supplements and all sorts of concoctions she dreamed up to get me to eat. It frustrated my parents massively, especially my mother. If it had taken giving me Quavers (and I was 5 it seems when they first came out), I am sure she would have done it. Any food is better than none at all. It's not fucking rocket science.

To make it clear (again) - I would take the “dieticians” advice and stay with the meal replacements. I would ABSOLUTELY try to offer my own version of something they like and tolerate along side it.

I am educated enough to know that full fat ice cream (I would make myself with an ice cream machine so I could make it with the absolute best ingredients) with some berries for example (low sugar high in vit c) or if perferred cocoa powder and TASTELESS dessicated liver (full of iron and b12) would be a nutritionally dense “meal” that would taste just like a milkshake.

I also would NOT offer upfs at any point - sorry this doesn’t align with what you’ve done. But I wouldn’t risk my child favouring these and then refusing the better options they had tolerated. I would be happy to work with the “dieticians” but I would it make it very clear that introducing UPF’s doesn’t align with my beliefs or my child’s best interests.

I also maintain that I am still perplexed as to how it gets to this point and if the UPF’s were never introduced it’s not actually possible for them to be the child’s preference.

The end.

Why have you put dietician in inverted commas?

Why are you offering a poor alternative along side the meal replacements?

You aren’t describing a nutritionally dense meal. You’re describing something that’s a poor alternative to something that’s already in the diet. You still haven’t explained the point of doing that.

Have quavers now become UPF’s?

You don't know what you would do because you have never been in the situation and I am not sure what your contribution to this thread is, other than to rile up posters who are/have been.